TERA is having its first of several CBT weekend here in NA and I believe in Europe as well. Do any players in the beta care to share their comments.

My recent MMOs included Aion (which I played for several months) and Rift (in which I played the beta for one weekend and came away with it not terribly impressed), but I was absolutely blown away by TERA. And while I'm not holding my breath that it will usurp WoW for the MMO crown (I mean, we've reached a point where we may as well say no MMO that will be released will ever do that, save for the next big thing Blizzard comes up with), I do see this as the Battlefield to WoW's Counter-Strike (as in, sure CS will always have more players, but Battlefield will be considered the poison of choice for those in the know).

Combat is genuinely fun and involving. I had played as a Sorcerer to the Beta cap of 22 and had a blast. I worked with a Berserker partner to level up, and as I watched him lay down the law, I do admit being slightly envious of the experience of swinging around that giant axe of his. Those that fear this will be a grind-fest as is typically the case of MMOs that are made by devs hailing from Korea can rest easy (at least, for tonight), as I can report as a veteran of EQ1, Lineage II, and iRO (bots are basically a requirement to advance in P2P Ragnarok) that the two of us cruised through the levels purely by questing at relatively break-neck speeds and hit the beta level-cap in what would be a Saturday morning and afternoon's play. In fact, word is that the game has received complaints from the Korean player-base that the leveling speed for their version of the game was way too fast.

However, I've also heard that TERA had suffered in its initial release in Korea due to slim-pickings in terms of end-game content (the usual suspect for the down-fall of many MMOs groomed to take on WoW). While it was released a little over a year ago and hopefully has received a healthy supply of updates in the interim that will come box-standard for the western release, this should be kept in mind come May 1st (or whatever messed up release date in Europe due to Oceans).

As for what I would think is the big white elephant in the room for many people on this forum, the art design, I actually do enjoy it. It is quite endearing to see a chubby little Mongoose running around with a a tower shield that I could only imagine him using while on his tippy-toes, and I've heard no real big complaints about the stripperific outfits from female players (I will concede that those who so vehemently denounce the alterations to the Ellin models as "censorship" I am somewhat concerned about). But if you're that hung up on the strategically placed slit on the rear side of the Castanic's skirt, at least give kudos to the environment art, which is simply staggering. Helps that the game is astoundingly well-optimised (a Geforce 8800 or better are cited to be the recommended requirement for GPU).

Shane

12-02-2012, 09:50 AM

If anyone has any beta keys to share, I'd like one.

"but Battlefield will be considered the poison of choice for those in the know."
What?

Tei

12-02-2012, 10:03 AM

Id love for a key, too. Looking forward for this new type of game (theres about 3 games of this type, counting Guild Wars 2). Hope are as fun as Amalur, and is not ruined by grinding :-/

1PointO

12-02-2012, 10:14 AM

I believe signing up for the free trial of IGN prime gets you access to the beta, among other things. Just remember to turn off autorenew.

KauhuK

12-02-2012, 10:42 AM

I have been playing in the EU server testing events (one has been running for this weekend). I have lvl 21 Archer (the cap for now is 22 in this test before the closed beta) and I have to say that the combat mechanic is rather good and involving. You can dodge attacks and as an archer you have to target the enemy to hit. Levelling is basicly done trough questing and while there are some variations to quests a lot of them involve killing X number of creeps. No grinding unless you want to do that though. Places change rather quickly and youre not going to be questing in the same place for long. The world is huge and beatiful and the game uses unreal engine. Crafting at low lvls seems to be a bit useless save but alchemy. What I dont like in the game is the silly revealing armors and oversexualised characters. But it feels rather fresh for an MMO made in Korea.

I still want GW2 too but damn I dont have time for both games :(

TailSwallower

12-02-2012, 12:30 PM

I have a key for the first person to PM me (already posted in the Kindness Club thread about it).

ETA: Key gone.

Rauten

12-02-2012, 04:15 PM

I just started playing yesterday night, playing a Lancer (tank class), and well...

For most of the stuff, it's the standard Korean grindfest. Sure, there are quests, but they only serve to mask the grinding. Luckily, leveling is rather fast, so there isn't that much grinding... for now. Overall, it feels like more than half of the game was ripped straight from Aion; the world just feels very very Aion-like. It has it's fair share of differences though, and Aion wasn't such a bad idea to begin with.

Still, the looks of most characters irks me.

You can be some sort of small animal-like thing, or you can be a loli (an entire race is loli girls; I am not making this shit up), or you can be <insert slutty looking surreal supermodel-like female> or <insert hunkamuscles male>. The females seem to go as far as swearing by that golden rule of "if you're a hawt female, the more defence a piece of armour grants, the less it covers"; I've seen female NPCs wearing literally steel panties and steel bras that cover little more than their nipples.

And yet, I'm liking it. Why? the combat. The combat is one of the most fluid I've ever seen in an MMO. No autoattack, no lock on, no nothing. I can see the combat working wonders in raids and PvP if the devs did the game right, unfortunately neither of those things are available in the current test, but we'll see. PvP in this game could be ridiculously fun, if done right.

TailSwallower

12-02-2012, 08:24 PM

EDIT: DigitalSignalX grabbed my key and got it working.

DigitalSignalX

13-02-2012, 08:44 AM

Tera has been on my radar for a long while, I'd like to try a chance at the beta too if anyone knows of a means. Lineage II and it's play style sort of shaped the way I picture the perfect MMO, and I've been hoping Tera fits into that mold with a modern spin. Aion is close, but frankly too westernized or "WoW-ish" in that you can get max level fairly easily and it's merely a matter of wash rinse repeat instances and crafting to gear up. In L2 you were always keeping close eye on your XP bar at the same time as crafting, planning your gear 5 levels down the road, and always keeping an eye out for PvP.

madd

13-02-2012, 02:21 PM

I did the IGN thing but won't try TERA, so, here you go:
G4WMGTKJY6PTAETDM5ATMPCA4

clippa

20-02-2012, 09:03 AM

Thoughts, comments? Fat beaver, paedobait, impossibly behunked sword lifters, slutty witches, lovely bright colours, mind numbingly dull fetch quests, slightly more arcadey combat, which I suppose is welcomed, NA beta flawless, EU beta horrible lag. I dislike MMO's and subscription fee's but I'm nearly, just nearly considering giving this one a go. I know it's a heartless machine, I know it's a time sink, but I .... no, I've just talked myself out of it :lol:
I do kind of get it, I can kind of get into that mindset, I can just about nearly enjoy and find comfort in that sort of automatic autopilot repetition of it all. Paying for the privilege of fooling myself into thinking that I'm having fun is a bit of a stretch though.

Unlock the framerate

Navigate to "TERA\Client\S1Game\Config"

open up the file "S1Engine.ini", and change

bSmoothFrameRate=TRUE

to

bSmoothFrameRate=FALSE

and save

-----

Fix the FOV

Navigate to "TERA\Client\S1Game\Config"

open up the file "S1Input.ini"

underneath the line "bEnableMouseSmoothing=true" (you may want to change that to false while you're in there :D ) add the line

Bindings=(Name="x",Command="fov 100")

(make sure there is no ; at the start of the line like there are with the lines underneath it.

and save

When you're in game, pressing x will change the fov to your desired value.

-----

Here's a video showing the difference between the default fov of 60 and 100

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4-CnTvRe_U

Vexing Vision

20-02-2012, 01:25 PM

The problem is the monster AI.

The game is genuinely fun for half an hour until you realize as a moderately skilled player you won't take any damage, depending on your abilities to run circles.

With two skilled players alternating aggro, you can take on even the initial boss monsters without taking a single hit.

The game is interesting, but since the way more interesting Alpha it's obviously going for the casual crowd, and eventually you'll get rather sick of the repetitive combat animations, even though they look great initially.

Such a shame. I am much, much more looking forward to Raiderz, also published by Frogster/Gameforge.

Shane

20-02-2012, 01:34 PM

How's the PvP?

Screwie

20-02-2012, 02:53 PM

The game is interesting, but since the way more interesting Alpha it's obviously going for the casual crowd, and eventually you'll get rather sick of the repetitive combat animations, even though they look great initially.

I'd not heard of this before. What changed between the Alpha and now?

Rauten

20-02-2012, 05:55 PM

How far did you make it, Vexing? It's true that it's ridiculously easy at first, but it may just be up to a certain point; First time you go up against those goddamned basilisks can be quite the challenge and quite epic. They're supposedly raising the cap a bit in the next beta weekend (2 weeks from now), so I guess we'll see then.

trjp

20-02-2012, 06:54 PM

Be HUGELY cautious of the levelling speed as it's almost certainly sped-up for a BETA.

Comments relating to AION concern me because AION was a hardcore/old-school tedious MMO - the combat was your standard 'choose a spot and start mutual shin-kicking until someone cries for their mummy' stuff and the genre needs to have moved away from that.